THERE are two camps when it comes to giving a reaction to the plans for a New York rugby league team to follow Toronto into the English game.

The first is to get overly giddy, start planning trips around the Big Apple in a big yellow taxi, believe all the hype that the game is finally spreading beyond its heartlands and then mentally start adding a few more cities to a wish list.

The other is to groan loudly, talk about the ‘grassroots here dying’, condemn it out of hand and say the focus of any investment should be on the game in Cumbria, south Lancashire and west Yorkshire. Essentially the areas that gave birth to the game and still sustain it.

I reckon it is possible, with a bit of joined up thinking and a proper strategy, that the two schools could be married and that expansion and looking after the grassroots could work in tandem.

The team behind New York say they have submitted a business plan to the Rugby Football League and have the backing of wealthy benefactors with a view to getting the go-ahead to enter the Championship in 2019.

They are looking at the Toronto blueprint, who won promotion from League 1 at first go, pulling in fantastic gates of 7,000 plus.

Next year will see Toronto battling with relegated Leigh and the likes of London, Featherstone and Halifax as they take a tilt at making it into Super League.

The founders of the New York club hope to get the nod to miss the first step and want to enter a rung below Super League.

Now we all know where they are going to get their players from.

The same place as Toronto - and going back to 1980, the same place as Fulham.

That is right, they will recruit from the existing heartlands of the game. How can they do anything other as they have to have a team to introduce to their new audience?

There should be no issue with that as long as they, like any other team, do their bit to grow players. In the case of north America it will be a longer job, but it is one they should address.

We cannot have a lengthening list of clubs - and I include some heartlands ones in that - who simply buy players off the peg and then do nothing to top up the player well.

So what is in it for British rugby league, should Toronto and New York finally get a place in Super League?

Not a lot for the two teams dropping out, sure.

But in another way surely the Trans-Atlantic presence could be monetised, to bring cash into the game as a whole. It is something the game has seemingly failed to do with Catalans, to the point that these days it seems a team in Perpignan's only purpose is to give Super League fans a weekend away.

It should work that a more global game and wider potential audience must be a better sell to sponsors and television.

In that way we can continue to feed the rugby playing nurseries.

The second point is this, a condition of Super League should be that all clubs, heartlands or expansion, should do their bit in growing the next generation.

And for me, that should mean - where feasible - running Academy and Reserves.

It is an abdication of responsibility to basically adopt a 'hands off' approach to the reserve grade and let clubs kill off this project because they are content with their current dual reg arrangements with neighbouring clubs.

Others say it is a cost thing. But how could it be that teams in the 60s, 70s and 80s could run A teams, but not cash-rich Super League clubs?

Each team has 30-odd registered players, only 17 can play first team each week and not all of the remainder are eligible for 19s.

Where are the others supposed to play?

Or is this the masterplan...expect Saints and Wigan, for example, to carry on investing in youth and growing the game and then casting off their players to bolster clubs with less prolific production lines.

We have to have a system that keeps players, below Super League, playing at the highest level they can for longer....and for some that may be reserves.

On the whole the salary cap has worked in stopping a team with a big financial backer, or the biggest gates, sucking up all the best players and dominating like happened in the years pre-Super League.

But it would be a huge reward and incentive for clubs who invest in youth if further breaks and exemptions on the cap were given to home grown players.